"MANAS is a journal of independent
inquiry, concerned with the study of the principles that move world society
on its present course, and with the search for contrasting
principles, which may be capable of supporting intelligent
idealism under the conditions of the twentieth century."

— from the MANAS publication statement

When we moved
to the Berkshires in 1980, Bob Swann's "subscription" to MANAS,
an eight-page weekly journal, followed us. Subscription
is in quotes because I don't ever remember a subscription
renewal request. Bob was just on Henry Geiger's list. Geiger
was the extraordinary writer, editor, and publisher of MANAS for
forty-one years from 1948 through 1988, the year before
his death at the age of 80.

MANAS was the highlight of the week for me.
I would walk to the mailbox at the foot of the drive and
start reading on the way up. It was like having a
private clipping service which spanned the ages of great
thinkers and activists. The same issue would have
bits of Plato, Kropotkin, Simone Weil, combined with news
of Wes Jackson's work to recreate a perennial agriculture.
MANAS never failed to reorient me to the finest idealism,
an idealism that was, after all, at the heart of our work
at the E. F. Schumacher Society (now the Schumacher Center for a New Economics). Though I had never
met the author of those many articles in person, the cessation
of publication of MANAS still meant the loss of a trusted
friend. MANAS was a singularly steady and wise voice
in a rapidly accelerating and uncertain age.

To our delight a new MANAS appeared in
the mailbox in 1999—not exactly a new MANAS but a
MANAS-sized newsletter announcing the availability of all
past issues of the weekly journal on CD-Rom. The CD
was the project of "MANAS Reprints," a devoted group of
friends of MANAS who knew Geiger personally. They also
knew that Geiger maintained an annotated index of all his
articles in card files. It was a valuable resource
that should be preserved. The Index too was digitalized.

Geiger was already publishing at the
time of the McCarthy hearings in the Senate in the early
1950s. Though not a political journal, the ideas discussed
in MANAS may well have been called subversive, for all great
ideas have the potential of overthrowing the status quo.
In such a political climate, Geiger kept his mailing list
very private, on a single set of metal label plates.

But MANAS readers came to know each other. Martha Shaw, a
long-time dedicated friend of the Schumacher Center and
its programs, was a subscriber. Martha so loved her weekly MANAS
that she crafted a purse just the right size to hold an issue without
folding. On her daily morning bike ride to the neighborhood diner for
a coffee and roll she always brought along her purse, the newest
MANAS, and several photo-copies of her favorite MANAS essays for
giving away. She understood well the spirit of MANAS, which was to
encourage the free exchange of ideas. Her collection of books, as
well as Henry Geiger’s personal collection of books that
informed the MANAS Journal, is housed at the Schumacher
Center’s Library.

MANAS was not a business affair for Henry
Geiger but an affair of the heart. The saving and
sharing of MANAS with new readers for a new century has
also been an affair of the heart. Thanks to the help of the MANAS Reprints team, we are pleased to make available through the Internet the complete library of MANAS articles—a
"record of 'intelligent idealism' in the past [that]
can be relied upon for guidance, [so that] the courage of
good men [and women] is not dampened by evil prospects,
but rather increased."